Answering the Absent-Experience Challenge to Intuition

Ole Koksvik (University of Bergen)

Abstract: In standard cases of perception, perceptual experience mediates both causally and rationally between the subject and the way things are. Suppose that Susan is looking at a grey cardboard box and comes to believe that there is a grey cubical object in front of her. In this case, her belief is both caused and justified by her perceptual experience.

It is natural to wonder whether something similar might occur in the case of intuition. A common objection to this idea is that at least in some cases there cannot be a causal connection between the subject and that which the intuition is about (think about moral and mathematical intuitions, for example). This objection might be answered by adopting a different stance on what intuitions are about: that they are not about numbers, mathematical relations, goodness, fairness or justice, but about our moral and mathematical concepts. If concepts are
psychological entities the objection has been answered: concepts and intuitions can interact in whatever way psychological entities normally do.

But even this view faces what one might call the absent experience challenge, which says that there is not even a candidate experience there to mediate between the intuiter and what the intuition is about. In this talk I attempt to answer the challenge. By paying careful attention to different aspects of both perceptual and intuitional
experience I aim to show that, while importantly different from perception, intuition is nevertheless an experience truly deserving of that name, one which can plausibly justify belief in its content.